‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ Not Ruling Out Star Wars and Marvel Characters

One of the most anticipated games from Square Enix for the avid gamer is Kingdom Hearts 3. It’s been almost 10 years since the release of Kingdom Hearts 2 and now Tai Yasue, co-director and game designer on Kingdom Hearts 3, has opened up about what’s on the table for the sequel. Since 2005, Disney has acquired both Marvel Entertainment and LucasFilm (Star Wars), and with that Square Enix has a lot of options for the third Kingdom Hearts. Learn more about the upcoming sequel after the jump.

One of the crown jewels of Square Enix has been the Kingdom Hearts series, first making its mark on the PlayStation 2, and its success has soared since then. The game centers around a young boy named Sora, on a quest to save his friends. Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, King Mickey has tasked Donald and Goofy with finding the “key” to protect both worlds from an advancing threat: the “Heartless.”

In a marriage of familiar elements from the company’s other successful franchise, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts was able to combine proven video game mechanics and storylines with instantly recognizable Disney characters. Yasue confirmed to Kotaku that the idea of incorporating the Star Wars and Marvel universes was not completely out of the question:

“Yeah, I can’t go into specifics, but there’s a LOT of new Disney stuff and we have our plates full. Theres a lot to consider – we’re looking at all of Disney, the new ones as well, they have a lot of pull and draw… They’re all under consideration. Nothing’s off-limits, we’re considering all of the worlds. There are so many wonderful concepts. We’re happy about that, but at the same time it’s really tough to choose.”

But the Yasue isn’t going just throw in characters for fan service, it has to make sense to the game of course:

“We have to come up with a world that has a lot of originality. We want variety in our new Kingdom Hearts, so we don’t want too many of one sort of world, that would look the same. For each world there has to be some meaning for it, in the plot; in Birth By Sleep, for instance, in the Cinderella scene, the characters learn something specific by relating to Cinderella. Also, gameplay-wise, is that world something that would make gameplay fun? There’s a lot I can’t say, but there’s so much to consider.”

While this isn’t exactly a guarantee that we will see some sort of Yoda/Iron Man team up, it is exciting to see Square Enix having the option of including these two universes in their upcoming game. Some past characters that were featured in Kingdom Hearts have included, Aladdin, Tinkerbell, Ariel, Belle, and many more.

What other film character could we expect to see? Is it possible that with its colossal success, Frozen will be featured in the next Kingdom Hearts installment.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will be available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 31, 2015.